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Growing Outcry Over Proceeding With Marathon

Two days before nearly 50,000 runners are scheduled to gather in Staten Island for the start of the New York City Marathon, opposition to the race continued to swell Friday and the Police Department, stretched thin from handling relief efforts, has called for department retirees to help with storm work and the marathon on Sunday.

Debate over whether to hold the race began soon after Hurricane Sandy hit the region Monday night. Critics have said that it is in poor taste to hold a race through the five boroughs while people are trying to cope with the storm’s aftermath and that city services should focus on storm relief, not the marathon. Proponents of the marathon believe the race will provide a needed morale boost, as well as an economic one.

Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, was the latest in an increasingly long line of public officials to call for the marathon to be postponed or canceled. In a statement Friday, Stringer said that “New York has experienced a tragedy of historic proportions” and residents in many hard-hit areas of the city “are struggling to keep body and soul together, deprived of basic essentials as temperatures drop.”

Stringer said the race should be postponed “to focus all of the city’s resources on the crucial task of helping our neighbors recover from this disaster.”

The likely Democratic candidates for mayor of New York have offered their opinions.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker and an ally of the mayor’s, added her voice to a chorus of politicians calling for the race to be postponed or canceled. “The decision to move forward with the marathon is not a decision I would have made,” she said in a statement. “That said, I think we need to look forward and continue to focus on the task at hand — helping those without electricity, food and water and rebuilding our city.”

William C. Thompson said the race should be canceled because “our neighbors are hurting and our city needs to make them its priority.” John Liu, the comptroller, told Reuters that it should go on because “it’s a big economic generator.” Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, who earlier in the week supported the decision to hold the race, reversed his view on Friday. “The pain and suffering still unfolding in our neighborhoods is too deep for words,” de Blasio said after touring Staten Island on Friday. He added, “It’s convinced me the needs are simply too great to divert any resources from the recovery.”

The comments by elected officials were echoed by thousands of people on social media. While some support Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s notion that the marathon can help get the city back on its feet, many others are disgusted that precious public resources will be used for a sporting event while millions of New Yorkers are without power, heat and food. Several online petitions and message boards have sprung up with thousands of signatures calling for the marathon to be postponed or canceled.

Photo

Workers continued to construct the finish line of the New York City Marathon on Friday. The fallen crane from the One 57 building is seen in the background.Credit
Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“This will forever tarnish the marathon as a brand and an event,” said Stephen Robert Morse, a 27-year-old from Brooklyn who started stopthemarathon.tumblr.com. “There are still thousands of people downtown and businesses that still lack necessities and it’s insulting to have tourists prioritized over the people of this city.”

Bloomberg, aware that the marathon generates hundreds of millions of dollars for the city, has repeatedly said the race will go on. He did not expect the Police Department to be overly burdened because the race is on a Sunday, when street traffic is limited. Many parts of the city, including Lower Manhattan, are expected to have their power back, freeing other workers.

Responding to questions about whether police officers would be taken off relief efforts to work the marathon, the mayor said: “There will be no diversion of resources. New York has to show we are here and we can recover.” He added: “You can grieve, you can cry and you can laugh all at the same time.”

The Police Department, meanwhile, has reached out to department retirees to help with storm work and the marathon. “We would begin deployments starting with the NYC Marathon and other assignments to assist the Department thereafter,” the department’s personnel bureau wrote in an e-mail to retirees.

Roy Richter, president of the New York Police Department Captains Endowment Association, said that in a normal year, maintaining order at the marathon “is a tremendous tax on the resources on the Police Department.” The police presence at this year’s race will be smaller than in the past “because of the severe strain on the department right now,” said Richter, who was living in a shelter in Rockaway because his home in Breezy Point, Queens, was destroyed.

While he was confident that the police officers at the race would do a good job, those officers would not be able to work in the “tremendous number of diverse communities that have been devastated,” he said.

In a typical year, about 1,000 full-time police officers and 500 auxiliary officers are stationed along the 26.2-mile course, which touches all five boroughs. (New York Road Runners, which puts on the race, also hires private security for the race.) But many officers are now working 12-hour shifts maintaining order in hard-hit neighborhoods, at gas stations and elsewhere. Some officers themselves may be without power at home, compounding the strain.

“They would be lucky to get the 500 auxiliary cops this time, especially if they don’t have their uniforms because their homes were washed-out,” said one retired police officer who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. Many retired officers might not have kept their uniforms even before the storm, he added. “It’s not like there are nasty crowds at the marathon, but with crowd control, you get the usual frustration.”

Video

Marathon Preparation Continues

Timekeepers for the New York Marathon continue their preparations despite complications from Hurricane Sandy.

Working traffic detail at the race is only one role the Police Department fills. Teams of officers must also supervise the installation of barriers along the course as well as posting signs telling residents to remove their cars. In the hours before the race, illegally parked cars are towed.

Mary Wittenberg, chief executive of New York Road Runners, defended Bloomberg’s decision to hold the race, saying it would be used as a platform to lift spirits and raise money. Her organization plans to donate $1 million, or $26.20 for every runner who starts the race, to relief efforts in the city. The Rudin Family and ING, two sponsors of the race, will donate a combined $1.6 million to storm relief. Road Runners is working to donate other supplies to relief efforts.

George Hirsch, the chairman of the board of Road Runners, acknowledged that running the marathon could be viewed as trivial and even a drain in light of the devastation in and around New York. But he expected the race to galvanize the city much as it did after the terrorist attacks in September 2001.

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“I understand the controversy completely and respect all the views on this, but any decision that was made by the mayor would have been controversial and to call off the race would have been equally controversial,” Hirsch said. “By Sunday afternoon, there won’t be any controversy. People will view it as an early step in the city’s recovery.”

New York’s marathon is the world’s largest, but this year the race will be noticeably smaller. Hirsch said he expected about 40,000 runners to begin the race, about 15 percent below what had initially been expected.

Wittenberg said Road Runners had “essentially canceled” nearly everything on its calendar before the marathon, including a youth event Thursday, the opening ceremony in Central Park on Friday and the Dash to the Finish Line 5K on Saturday, which would have been run through Midtown.

Some runners are torn about taking part. Simon Ressner, a lieutenant in the Fire Department, said that police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians are often needed unexpectedly in a disaster situation like this one. He noted that at least four police officers were at a gas station that he passed Thursday on the way to evaluate the safety of the burned homes in Breezy Point. About 300 people had gathered to fill their gas cans, and the police officers were there to control the crowd.

“There’s a concrete example of why you need all the city resources available right now,” said Ressner, who added that he was 80 percent sure he would run Sunday. “I’ve written two e-mails to the Road Runners saying, ‘Just postpone it.’ That way, you’ll still get the money, you’ll still have a high-profile event, but it would show that you’re being sensitive. But now, we’re not going to show the world we’re resilient, we’re going to show them we’re selfish.”

First responders are not the only ones questioning the wisdom of holding the race. People on Staten Island are particularly angry that their borough is being used as a jumping-off point for the race while critical services for those stranded by the storm are not getting through.